Use standard lessc and minify CSS using Node.js

[silverwind]

This changes the previous nonstandard lessc to the official one and
enables CSS minification via the clean-css module.

To build CSS, Node.js is required along with a npm install to get the
tools installed locally in node_modules so there is no dependency on
binaries in PATH. Benefits include:

• Allows one to have a standard lessc in PATH.
• Can now use command line switches on lessc.
• Minified CSS brings faster page load times and also has the benefit
  of discouraging contributors from editing CSS directly.

To build CSS, Node.js is required along with a npm install to get the
tools installed locally based on the information in package.json.

[lafriks]

nodejs will be needed anyway to use webpack later so LGTM

[sapk]

Why not use https://github.com/tdewolff/minify ? I prefer to limit node package for space and dev env.

Advantage of https://github.com/tdewolff/minify : we could use it for other format also.

[sapk]

We should output to public/css/index.min.css (need change also in template for using it) and keep public/css/index.css for readability.

[silverwind]

I thought the Less source is meant for reading/editing, wouldn't you agree?

(I'm actually not a fan of Less, would rather use SCSS or plain CSS).

[silverwind]

minifyseems good for CSS, thought I'm sure cleancss ought to beat it once advanced options are turned on:

$ node_modules/.bin/cleancss public/css/index.css | wc -c
   61084
$ minify public/css/index.css | wc -c
   60996

For JS, it's slightly worse than uglifyjs with default options, but I assume with advanced options, that size can be reduced quite a bit too:

$ uglifyjs public/js/**/*.js | wc -c
   516451
$ minify public/js/**/*.js | wc -c
   517952

I think I'll go with minify.

[sapk]

Just to find why you want to use lessc version of node.
Is it because it failed to run the makefile if you have lessc (node version) on your host allready installed ? (because the flag between golang version and node version are different)

In this case we could do the same trick and use $(GOPATH)/bin/lessc to select the golang version.

[silverwind]

Is it because it failed to run the makefile if you have lessc (node version) on your host allready installed

Yes, exactly. With the node version first in PATH, it was failing to build because that one takes different arguments. I guess I could apply your workaround and keep the dependencies go-only for now. There's no real benefit if using the official lessc as far as I can tell. The output files were the same.

But there's still the issue that the go version can break other projects that rely on the standard lessc if the go version comes first in PATH. Is it possible to install a go binary under a different name, or maybe is there a version that uses a different binary name?

[silverwind]

Seems the author of less-go added this to their README:

THIS PROJECT IS NO LONGER MAINTAINED, feel free to fork and use as boilerplate for further usages

So I think I'd rather keep lessc on the Node.js version.

[sapk]

README.md updated 3 hours ago 😭

My principal point of keeping go version is: we don't have "extra" deps.
But I totally understand that in some time we need to pass to node deps for a lot more of reason.
Maybe at this point, we could split ui in a separate repo (submodule) that we update like sdk or git and that the ui is more relying on the API.

For this PR, if you find enough L-GTM from maintainers it is good for me. I'm not against node deps but rather more prefering go version. 😄

For the PR content itself, it looks good with updated documentation and all. It will just need a new sign for the drone file.

Edit: for keeping a go bin out of PATH : go build -o local-lessc github.com/kib357/less-go/lessc and use ./local-lessc locally.

[bkcsoft]

Urgh, not more javascript :pukes: Add a check that $GOPATH/bin/lessc exists instead of the current (invalid IMO) check

[lafriks]

@bkcsoft we will need nodejs for compiling js anyway so not much point on keeping around unmaintained golang binary

[codecov-io]

Codecov Report

Merging #2337 into master will not change coverage.
The diff coverage is n/a.

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##           master    #2337   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   26.99%   26.99%           
=======================================
  Files          85       85           
  Lines       17097    17097           
=======================================
  Hits         4615     4615           
  Misses      11807    11807           
  Partials      675      675

---

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[lafriks]

Rebased and resolved conflicts

We need this as our used less-go does not compile anymore on golang 1.9 and there is error:

# gopkg.in/olebedev/go-duktape.v2
../../gopkg.in/olebedev/go-duktape.v2/duktape.go:83: constant 18446744073709551615 overflows int
make: [Makefile:278: public/css/index.css] Error 2 (ignored)
make: lessc: Command not found
make: [Makefile:279: public/css/index.css] Error 127 (ignored)
lessc -i public/less/index.less -o public/css/index.css

To fix its compilation on golang 1.9 go-less needs to be ported to go-duktape.v3 so as go-less is not maintained anymore we should drop it

[sapk]

LGTM (since less-go is not maintained anymore and fail to build)

[lunny]

Why deleted public/css/index.css ? I don't think is a good idea to delete this.

[lafriks]

It's not deleted it is minimized